How to be gay halperin
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As much as I am personally devoted to the older iconic texts myself such as Mildred Pierce—which, at the same time, was never the Camp standard that What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? became (Robert Aldrich, 1962)—and as much as I revere Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, I am also aware that some profound shifts in not only the predicament of being gay in the United States but also in terms of shared knowledge and affiliations have taken place in my own lifetime.
These titles and media venues and personalities all evince the homogenization of gay culture into the dominant culture—a phenomenon that Halperin rightly laments, but not one that he illuminates. He really does his homework, boning up on Camp, old Hollywood melodrama, and the other dimensions of the gay culture he once disavowed but now makes an urgent case for as necessary and crucial to the fate of gay culture and culture generally.
These contextual chronicles are provided with major portions of the coursework, which dares to suggest that gayness is a way of being that gay men must learn from one another to become who they are. (Baz Luhrmann, 2001). (“Why don’t you love me?” Indeed.) Halperin explores this culture, to be sure, but not with the flair and flavor that one might expect from a study of such obsessive length.
Anyone working in these fields will want to consult his latest book How to Be Gay, a vast, sprawling study of the state of gay culture—its history, its permutations over the decades, and its current state of disavowed but enduring relevance not only to gay people but to those interested in “culture” generally. Dr. Halperin, I’d love to meet you at a party sometime.
Nonetheless, I think the book could have benefited from less material from more examples.u
JUMP CUT
A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA
Images from Mildred Pierce:
Joan Crawford as Mildred Pierce, Ann Blyth as her scheming daughter Veda, in Michael Curtiz’s 1945 adaptation of James M.
Cain’s novel Mildred Pierce.
Working-class female friendship and the great Eve Arden.
Halperin calls Butterfly McQueen’s character Lottie, Mildred’s maid, the film’s most moral character, but her role is actually quite small.
Veda is an aspiring musician, an aspect of her character de-emphasized in the film.
Yes, I also love that movie.
The classical Hollywood female star in a no womans land of new media and youth culture.
Doing his homework— David Halperin’s How to be Gay
reviewed by David Greven
Halperin, David M. How to be Gay.
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012. And it is how and why these different forms have come to be central that is the real topic of conversation and analysis. In many ways, this book is a record of what Halperin did to become gay, the texts and thought in which he immersed himself in order to teach the class. I can’t, unlike some fans he describes, shout back every line at the screen as if it were Rocky Horror, but I have loved it as long as I can remember.
He is being didactic in the non-pejorative sense and he is using the Socratic method.
OK Dr. Halperin, you win. Ultimately, this book might be titled How to Like Older White Gay Men if You Are a Young White Gay Man. I think that even Joan Crawford’s shoulders are not broad enough to bear the intellectual weight that Halperin has thrust upon them.Touché! I think there are two things going on:
First, the book is backwards. What remains “Foucauldian” is Halperin’s hostile attitude towards psychoanalysis, which he dismisses with a simplistic disdain that I find extremely troubling.) With the zeal of a convert, Halperin explores the significance of the older gay male love for such icons and the cultural texts associated with them.